Moview review: Cloverfield

I had been looking forward to seeing the Sci-Fi action monster movie Cloverfield since I saw the trailer and poster. Part of that is simply because I am a sucker for any movie set in New York City. I was prepared for it to be somewhat lame, but it was better than I expected. As far as I could tell the monster did not have a name ("What is 'that thing'?"), but was finally gargantuan enough to live up to the claim of "attacking" New York City in a credible and fitting manner for a city that is itself a giant monster. King Kong and Godzilla (and those Legend zombies as well) all seemed like simply so many mere tourists in the city, but the Cloverfield monster put all of them together to shame. The quirky YouTube style of filming actually worked fairly well. My only real complaint was that the movie was way too short and maybe too low budget and would have been more of a blockbuster if there had been some traditional cinema wrapped around it to give it a more robust beginning, some scientific interludes, and a better ending. Sounds like an invitation for some YouTube video mashups, or maybe just for a prequel and a sequel. The sound effects were decently creepy and the sound track for the credits was cool. Make sure to stay through the credits and listen carefully for the last few seconds.

In short, I was disappointed by the fact that this was more of a "short feature" than a full-length movie, but otherwise I found it reasonably entertaining.

-- Jack Krupansky